


There Will Be Blood (Or: The Shittiest Three Days of Peter's Life)

by Dorkangel



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Actions have consequences Erik, Alex Summers is Not OK, Allegory, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bigotry & Prejudice, Divergent Timelines, Eventual Happy Ending, Everything Hurts, Everything I Write Is An Allegory, Family Dynamics, First Meetings, Gen, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Looking at you Magneto, Mentions of the Holocaust, Mutant Hate, Mutant Politics, Ororo's Mom didn't die, Peter didn't break into the Pentagon, Post-Canon, Sean Cassidy is a stoner, Teen Angst, Teenage Dorks, Trask Industries, Unethical Experimentation, boys being dorks, that's basically my explanation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-22 18:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 10,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3738376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a mutant, for Peter, is like having a big red target painted across his chest; even more so after Magneto dumped a stadium on the White House and threatened the President. He can name, like, eight other mutant kids (and two of those are related to him, so they kinda don't count), and only one or two he can hang out with (since none of the human kids will), and... Well, when the whole world's against them, all they can really do is stay safe and try to pass for normal. And maybe fight back, just a little bit.</p><p>*</p><p>Peter Maximoff and Alex Summers try and deal with the fallout of Magneto's attack together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. THE FIRST DAY (part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged it as an allegory, and said there was mentions of the Holocaust. It is and there are, in so much as Peter's family are Holocaust survivors and are freaked out by the sudden mutant hate, and X-Men has always been an allegory for all oppressed groups of people. I personally find that part of history very disturbing, and have read quite a few survivor stories and talked to survivors in the past, so it isn't too trigger-y. Just a warning.  
> (I promise it remains quite cheerful, only with little bits of extreme seriousness. And the angstiness is simply due to teenagers being awkward and an unhappy atmosphere of bigots.)

Being a mutant is like having a big red target painted across your chest. Existing is dangerous. Being conspicuous is dangerous.  
Using your powers is beyond dangerous.

Take, for example, the Summers brothers. Alex is a senior, a year older than Peter, and Scott is only twelve but they go to a middle and high school, so when Scott gets a killer headache one day and then literal fucking lasers shoot out of his eyes and he disappears off to be 'homeschooled', everyone knows. And everyone also knows that mutation is a genetic thing, which means it's passed on through a family, so OMG Alex must be a mutant, he probably has the ability to poison the water supply, we should totally burn him at the stake.  
He becomes a social pariah, but the teachers ignore it until the poor kid gets egged, at which point they move him to another home room.  
Peter's home room, to be specific.  
The only spare seat is next to Peter, because it's not like he had any particular best friends before the whole thing with the president, but now no one will even talk to him. Partially it's that he's ADHD and Polish and a shoplifter, but mostly it's because he is very, very obviously a mutant. His hair is silver, for fuck's sake.

When Alex walks in Peter scoots over, but he can't decide whether the look on the older boy's face is relief because there's a mutant in there already, disgust because there's a mutant in there already (he might not be a mutant himself, Peter doesn't know), or just That Sinking Feeling. Peter first got That Sinking Feeling when his teacher read the government-sanctioned a announcement out in class and everyone turned to stare at him, a few weeks after all the shit that went down with at the White House. And, fuck, that had been scary- the Sentinels and Magneto both.  
"Mutants are people with supernatural abilities or powers. They can be easily identifiable by their strange appearances. For example, glowing body parts, unusually textured skin, or unnatural hair colours. They can be dangerous, but for now the official stance of the US government is that they should continue to be treated as ordinary Americans."  
When they stare at Alex, he - unlike Peter, who sinks down in his seat and prays to whatever deity decided to give him fucked up DNA that no one decides to come after him or his family - glowers back. Eventually they stop looking at the two mutie freaks at the back, though, and go back to listening to the teacher talk about cheerleader try-outs and the track team.  
"Hi." he says to Alex, under his breath, and starts tapping his fingers on the table because he didn't run to school this morning (basically, using powers in public has become a Bad Idea) and the energy overloading inside has become almost too much to bear. "I'm Peter Maximoff."  
"I know." grunts Alex in reply. "Alex Summers."  
"I know."  
He does know, actually, because even before everything that's happened Alex got sent to prison for arson two years back, which is sorta the kind of thing that spreads around a high school like wildfire.  
"Is-" he begins, then cuts off, because really there's no sensitive way to phrase this. Peter's an expert in saying insensitive things and not getting beaten up, of course, but he wants Alex to actually not ignore him forever. "Is your brother ok?" he blurts out. "I mean, people aren't giving him too much shit?"  
Surprise flickers across Alex's face for a moment, and then he forces it back to a neutral expression.  
"Uh. Yeah, he's fine, and he's homeschooled now, so, no. And he can't see."  
"What do you mean?"  
Alex scowls. "He has to wear a blindfold. If he opens his eyes..."  
Bad things happen.  
"I get it."  
At that, Peter gets a flat stare levelled at him, and backs up immediately.  
"No, seriously man, I do. My twin, Wanda, when she gets mad stuff levitates and glows and sometimes reality goes really weird."  
Most of the anger goes out of Alex's frame when he hears how defensive Peter's voice is.  
"I didn't know you had a twin." he mumbles.  
"She was in a mental hospital until that stuff at the White House, but we don't reckon she's safe to go to school. Because of the..."  
The mutant stuff. The pair of them seem to be bad at saying it out loud.  
"She looks more normal, though." adds Peter quickly, before it can get too awkward. "Than me."  
She doesn't look completely normal, of course. Human and everything, but she's pale and sometimes dead-eyed and unreal and it hurts to see. They visited her in the hospital and everything, and Wanda does have genuine mental issues, so it's not like they just locked her up for being a mutant. But, still. It wasn't fair.  
He guesses Wanda just got the wrong end of the stick, like he did with his appearance. At least he hasn't got blue skin, or fur.  
"You got off lucky." he says, voicing some of what's in his head. "No physical mutations, I mean."  
"No," growls Alex, and Peter suddenly realises that was a really, really dumb thing to say. "I didn't."  
"Sorry."  
"Look, can you-"  
"I only meant-"  
A couple of bored eyes flick towards them, up from magazines held under desks, and they both cool down.  
"...sorry." mutters Alex, eventually, and Peter thinks he means it.  
"It's ok." he replies, because it really is. His family can reach quadlingual (which apparently isn't a word) levels of yelling at him to for god's sake shut up and go to sleep every night, so he's used to it, and he knows no one's actually trying to be harsh. There was even Yiddish last night, which is hilarious because he didn't even know he could speak Yiddish.  
His aunt is actually beginning to freak out. She survived the Nazis when she was a kid, grew up in a concentration camp, and this is a different kind of persecution but it's still persecution. The government isn't rounding them up or anything yet, but that isn't stopping her from trying to persuade Uncle Django to unload him and his sisters on their relatives in Europe, although they've all thus far managed to avoid that by pointing out that all this shit started in Paris and it's very probably worse there.  
"It's just that when I use... it, people get hurt." Alex grates out.  
Peter nods cautiously. "They're all different and they all suck, right? Like, I go really, really fast, and it means I get places quick and I notice stuff, but do you know how slow you're talking? It's torture."  
His hands on the table are becoming a bit of a blur, and come to think of it, why is home room taking so long? Oh. Because it's only been ten minutes.  
"This better?" jokes Alex, speaking more quickly.  
"Ha ha, very funny. No."  
There's a moment of silence, and then:  
"Could you possibly stop tapping?"  
"I really can't. It's, like, therapeutic."  
"Alright."  
The rest of home room passes in silence, which is essentially just depressingly boring, and then the bell goes and Peter has to mentally restrain himself from zooming out of the class so fast that everyone else gets thrown at the walls in his slipstream.  
"Hey," cuts Alex, before he can disappear. "You got anyone to eat lunch with?"  
Peter shrugs. Some kids didn't mind him, but those same kids have threatened him now, once or twice, or just actively told him that he can't sit with them. One girl was sweet about it, he guesses, because at least she apologised and said it was because her dad didn't want her associated with freaks. He said he understood, although really he didn't. Not at all. It's not like he's catching.  
"Bleachers?"  
He nods gratefully, and then they're both going their separate ways, to classes which are probably going to be equally painful.


	2. THE FIRST DAY: part 2

He has a note for gym, claiming that he's sick, when in reality it should say that he can't keep a lid on his superspeed if he has to run. The teacher, a guy who retired from the army just in time to miss Vietnam and takes out his frustration about this on his students (Peter thinks he's secretly glad to have missed Vietnam, but isn't stupid enough to mention it, as punishments in gym class are usually push-ups and even if his bones are unnaturally light, push-ups fucking suck), looks at Peter like he found him on the bottom of his shoe and goes 'Again?!', but lets him sit out.

Chemistry isn't as easy to avoid. His hands kind of vibrate, so he does his best not to touch any test tubes and lets everyone else discuss mitochondria or amino acids or whatever useless shit they're meant to be learning this week. Ordinarily, he'd just truant and rob all the local convenience stores and gas stations blind to supplement his lunch, but his uncle sat down with him and asked him really seriously not to bring attention to himself. Humans don't need another reason not to like mutants, and kleptomania is hardly ingratiating.  
Peter keeps thinking about those three guys who turned up in his basement and asked him to _break into the Pentagon_ with them. Fuckin' surreal, man. They were all mutants too, he thinks, because he saw Awkward-Overintelligent-Nerd turn blue and furry and feral on the news, and the one who looks like a mercenary and had probably been wearing the same clothes for at least a year (and no underwear, not that Peter checked) had claws coming out of his hands.  
Professor Boozehead totally failed to show any powers in front of Peter, but then proceeded to do mind-control on the news, which kind of makes Peter wonder why they didn't just _make_ him do what they wanted.  
He said no, obviously, even if it was kind of tempting. Who the hell breaks into a prison just for shits and giggles?  
Besides, they were helping _Magneto_. The guy who killed Kennedy, threatened Nixon on live TV, and wants to commit genocide. No way in hell does Peter want any part in that- 'Brotherhood of Mutants' his ass.  
He wonders if Magneto and his promises of power and revenge tempted Alex at all. Peter and Lorna, his baby sister, had watched in total horror, and he knows for a fact that his aunt and uncle stayed up all night arguing about mutants and humans and Erik Lehnsherr (he found out later that that's Magneto's real name) but some people surely must have been swayed. There are always people like that, apparently.

For once, lunch can't come soon enough.


	3. THE FIRST DAY: part three

"I didn't think you were going to turn up." says Alex, by way of greeting, when Peter wanders over him. They're right up next to the edge, far away from anyone else.  
"Where else would I go?" grins the younger boy, and pauses to try and find his sandwiches in his bag. There's about eight, in total, and two packets of chips.  
"Jesus Christ." laughs Alex, staring at it. "How much food, Maximoff?"  
"My metabolism's fucked." he explains quickly, and plonks himself down next to Alex. "It's giving my Aunt Marya an aneurism, trust me. When... the stuff... first came in I kept fainting all the time, and she freaked."  
"If you don't mind me asking," Alex begins slowly, a slight frown creasing his face, and suddenly it hits Peter that this guy - the same guy who beats people up for even looking at him funny - is trying really hard, for him. "What even are your powers?"  
"I told you: I'm just super-duper fast. I can run on water, I'm that quick. The world stops and I go faster than a jet. And, hey, my aunt and uncle are really Catholic, so their reaction to the whole running-on-water was precious. You?"  
Alex nods to himself.  
"Right. I... My chest burns, and then these rings go out and- I don't know. Things get blown up, or set on fire."  
_Oh_. Suddenly a lot of things make sense.  
"Arson." Peter says out loud, and then winces. "Sorry, insensitive."  
"No, you're right. I didn't mean to, by the way. It just happened."  
They eat in silence for a moment, and it's more than a little bit of a relief when he drops something and can just whizz forward to catch it without acting normal.  
"You got a phone in your house?" asks Alex, fake-casual and out of nowhere. Peter grins and shakes his head.  
"My sister killed it. Younger one can control metal, and one day she stamped her foot and the phone just..." He makes a gesture with his fist like he's crumpling a can or a ball of paper or something.  
"What's the deal with your family anyway?" queries Alex.  
Peter suppresses the urge to say that _no one really has any idea_ , and thinks it over for about two seconds- which is sorta long, for him.  
"Um, it's a bit complicated. There's me and Wanda, obviously, and my other sister, Lorna. She's seven, and, uh, Mom died after she was born. Uncle Django and Aunt Marya can't have kids, so I guess they were happy to take care of us when she got sick, and then they took us back to America when she... passed away."  
"Where are you from?"  
"Poland. That's where we settled, anyway."  
He doesn't mention that his mom and Aunt Marya were in the camps. Peter's an open book and all, but Alex doesn't need to know that.  
"Then, how come your name's Peter?"  
"It says Pietro on the birth certificate." he points out, and then decides he's been interrogated for long enough.  
"How about you?"  
At that, Alex scowls.  
"Foster family. They only give a damn about me 'cos of Scotty, because he's tiny and cute and generally a perfect little boyscout. Even with the mutant thing."  
Alex is lucky, Peter thinks, even if they don't care. There was a kid a little older than them on the local news, Armando something-or-other, who had gotten into a fight outside his college and his skin turned rocky and hard, and his family kicked him out.  
"Neither of my parents were... like us." continues Alex. "They- there was a plane crash, so I didn't really know them, but I'm pretty sure they weren't..."  
"I know my mom wasn't." frowns Peter. "But Aunt Marya and Uncle Django don't seem surprised. I mean, they're a little shocked, but not like you'd expect. So...?"  
He shrugs.  
"Your dad?" suggests Alex.  
Peter's lips twist unhappily. No one ever mentions his dad- at least, not in front of him. Every now and then Marya and Django get drunk and start screaming at each other about the guy in Romani, but all Peter's ever really gathered is that a) yes, they all have the same dad and b) he is _not_ the kind of guy you want to talk to.  
"Probably. He's, like, Herr Assface, though. Apparently. I never met him."  
That's all 'Dad' is to him. Some asshole who never showed up, apart from to father Lorna seven years ago. There was (yet) another sister too, once - Anya - but she died in a fire when she was a toddler. Maybe that's why their dad left, Peter thinks, and then accidentally met Magda (that was his mom's name) in a bar and they had sex and that was Lorna. Maybe he doesn't know about the twins, or their baby sister, and that's why he never visited.  
And then again, maybe he's just an asshole. The latter is easier to believe.  
"Fair enough."  
"Christ," laughs Peter, as a thought occurs to him, and leans back so he's lying nearly horizontal and looking up at the sky. "It's like a lottery, isn't it? Who gets cancer, who's a mutant. Our genes don't care."  
Alex is staring at him like he doesn't know if he's joking or not. Peter just closes his eyes.  
"I think that there's a reason." says the older boy quietly. His voice is as gruff as usual, but Peter's beginning to realise that that's just how Alex talks. "There has to be."  
"What, like, God or something?"  
"I don't know." There's a heavy sigh. "I just think there's got to be some kind of reason that my little brother can't open his fucking eyes without carving a hole in whatever he's looking at."  
He nods, but he's not convinced. The idea of a god isn't one that wins Peter over, not with so much of his family in the Holocaust. How Marya kept her faith, he doesn't know, he just knows that he personally can't. What kind of a god would do that to people? What kind of a god would put a glitch in Wanda's brain, or keep the medicines that his mom would have needed to survive out of where they could get them, or design Peter and Wanda and Scott and Alex and Lorna and Armando and every other mutant to be special, and then let people hate them?


	4. THE FIRST DAY: part four

Magneto's on the TV again that night. Well, he's on the news every night, pretty much, whether mundane news about him (like his name) or sensational ( _Mutants involved in Cuban Missile Crisis! Exclusive to Fox!_ ), but this isn't just news about him. This is actually Magneto.  
The screen flickers, and then the anchor disappears and there's this threatening figure, drenched in shadows, with a pointed helmet and a heavy cape.  
The only person near the screen is Lorna, who's back in her princess dress and playing horsey with a couple of plastic figures, not really paying attention. But then that deep, cruel-sounding voice starts up, and she looks up and-  
Her shrill, thin shriek fills the entire house. Peter's in the living room before she can even draw breath again.  
It only takes one look at the screen for him to work out why she's so scared.  
"Ok, come on, he's not here," he murmurs, lifting her up and carrying her to where his aunt is running in from the kitchen.  
"Magneto." he explains, and she pales but takes Lorna's hand immediately to sit her down at the table and give her a cookie, talking all the while in soft, comforting Polish. He thinks it's Polish, anyway, it could be German. Or fucking anything.  
And then he zooms back to the living room, because Magneto is morbidly fascinating and he wants to hear what the kids at school are going to be beating him up over tomorrow.  
Wanda's already there, in one of his t-shirts and her own mini skirt, plus huge hoop earrings that he thinks belongs to their aunt.  
"What's happening?" he asks, voice eager and nervous, and her eyes flicker to him before they go back to the screen again.  
"He's threatening that senator. The one who wants registration."  
"Every mutant death," booms the megalomaniac on the news. "Shall be repaid in human blood."  
Shit. The TV's glowing pink and floating.  
"Wanda..." he says, carefully.  
"Repay this, you fucking _Arschloch_." she snarls, and suddenly the red glow isn't around the screen, it's around Magneto's helmet and whatever he's using to control the news station disappears as he stumbles backwards.  
Wanda flies backwards as well, and Peter catches her before she can fall.

No one really sleeps that night. It's an awful thing to do, but he grabs his twin and runs both of them to an empty warehouse just outside of town. She takes the cue, and before long the place is on fire. Peter zooms around and hits things faster than the speed of sound, and the entire unsteady frame of it echoes with the force of their fear and rage.  
They can't take their anger out on the people who are actually doing this to them: it'll only make it worse. This is the closest thing.  
They won't get caught anyway, because Wanda's magic doesn't leave fingerprints and there's no witnesses, and so for all intents and purposes they were at home all night.

No one came, or even called the fire department, and they sat on the roof of the warehouse across from it to watch it burn, thin tongues of flame licking up at the dark sky.  
"We can't tell anyone." she whispers, and leans her dark, curly head on his shoulder. "And we can't do this again."  
They're speaking English now, because they're teenagers and they really, really don't care about 'cultural assimilation' or whatever it is that bothers their aunt and uncle so much. If life has taught them anything, it's that it's better to fit in.  
"Peter," she says, more sharply, because she knows he's not paying attention. His brain is going other places, at a hundred miles an hour. "We can't be like him."  
"We aren't!" he protests, but doesn't move to dislodge her. They've been apart too long already, and they're _twins_ , joined at the hip and all that.  
"People don't know that, Pietro."  
Uh oh. Proper name.  
"They're going to see." he promises, just as a cop car pulls up. "No one I know is anything like Magneto, never mind the mutants."  
Wanda wraps her arms around him, and then they're gone, each lying in their beds at home as if they had never been anywhere else.


	5. THE SECOND DAY: part one

Alex isn't in home room that morning. To be honest, it kind of worries Peter - he's on edge, even after last night, and he can't help wondering if the kid he saw being stuffed into a locker on the way in was a mutant or just unlucky - because kids disappearing is exactly the kind of thing that his aunt gets antsy about. Alex probably hasn't run away or been kidnapped, though. Maybe he's just late, or he's doing something else.  
Problem is, without anyone to talk to, Peter is bouncing off his mental walls before they're even halfway through. The teacher's used to it, and she was well-warned, because there's, like, twelve kinds of attention disorders written on his file, but she's relieved enough when he eventually sticks his hand in the air and asks to go to the bathroom.  
"Make sure you're in time for first period." she calls after him as he walks out, and he nods.  
"Yeah, sure ma'am, will do." The words come out as a bit of a blur, and he shuts up.

Somehow, in a practically empty corridor, he gets barged into twice, and one of the assholes who does pauses from a moment to pull Peter backwards a step by his hair.  
"What the fuck even if this, freak?" spits the jerk, over Peter's cry of pain and shock.  
"Let go of me, asshole." he snarls back, and isn't actually surprised when the hand in his hair shoves him to the ground and the collected jocks snicker.  
To them, he appears to be lying on his back, winded, and only just managing to roll out of the way of a kick to the ribs.  
To himself, he lies there for about three seconds, and then jumps upwards and tugs the guy who grabbed him's pants down, then whizzes to the art corridor and back with a pair of scissors before he rolls out of the way of the kick. When the jock tries to get laid tonight, or just changes clothes, he'll find ' _IM A DICK_ ' cut painstakingly into his boxers.  
No one's ever accused Peter of not being creative.

And the hilarious thing is that someone's been putting fliers up. He ignores them at first - they're probably just anti-littering, or lying about the merits of summer school - but then they catch his eye and he turns to pull one off the wall and examine it.  
_We are a mutant-friendly environment!_ screams a hideous combination of red and radioactive green. His mouth actually, literally, physically drops open, and he chokes on a laugh.  
"They're lying." calls a childish voice. Peter stops laughing and twirls guiltily around- he's just down from the principal's office, and there's a little girl with red hair perched on one of the chairs next to it.  
Her face is almost scarily adultish.  
"Look at what's happening to you, and me, and Scott and Alex." she adds grimly, and Peter walks over to her, his eyebrows raising.  
"What?"  
"Scott was in my class when he manifested." she explains, still calm, and then looks a little put-out. "His mind was screaming."  
She's wearing a blouse and sweater vest over nearly ironed slacks, and is generally doing a really disturbing job of looking and acting like a miniaturised adult. "I'm Jean."  
"Pete-"  
"You're Pietro. I know."  
"No one calls me that." he points out. She shrugs.  
"It's your name. I know these things, in case you're wondering, which you are."  
She's a mutant, he realises. A powerful one.  
"I'm fast." he explains, when she looks at him like she needs an explanation.  
"Your mind moves too fast."  
He grins at having annoyed her a little, and then wonders why no one's heard this fucked up conversation.  
"I'm keeping them away." she explains, and then a frown flickers across her face. "And those posters are still lying."  
She blinks, and they all float down to the floor.  
"You can't just-" he stammers, and she shrugs.  
"I think I can do anything."  
He runs away, and she doesn't stop him.


	6. THE SECOND DAY: part two

When he looks at lunch, - his lessons were mainly spent trying to ignore the thought of creepy twelve year old Jean and her telepathy/telekinesis, and he suspects that all this trying to act normal is sending his grades into an even steeper nosedive than what they were in already - he finds Alex in the same place on the bleachers, glaring a hole into the football pitch.  
"Hey, man." he greets, and gets a nod in return. "I didn't see you this morning."  
"I didn't fucking do it." barks Alex, and Peter jumps as he's sitting down.  
"Uh, ok-"  
Alex sighs in frustration and runs his hands through his spiky blonde hair, further mussing it up.  
"Someone set fire to a warehouse downtown, and with my track record..."  
Guilt hits Peter like a fucking steam train. Seriously. He feels like an insignificant smear on the tracks of an enormous guilt-train. Of course someone was going to get blamed for it, and of _course_ it'd be Alex.  
"I believe you." he stammers, eyes wide. "I mean, I know you didn't."  
"You sound pretty fucking sure." continues Alex angrily. He's still not looking at Peter. "Considering you've met me _twice_ -"  
"It was my sister, ok?" he blurts out, then immediately regrets it. If he admitted that it was his idea then Alex'd probably never talk to him again, and he kinda needs all the friends he can get right now, but it isn't fair to blame Wanda either. His life is going to shit right now, what the hell-  
"She saw Magneto," he adds, mind running through a sequence of possibly believable lies over the top of his inner monologue. "A-And she needed to break something, and we didn't want our house to burn down..."  
"Jesus, Peter."  
Alex reaches around to grab his shoulder and pull him into a spectacularly uncomfortable embrace. He doesn't move, because he has no right in hell to make Alex feel guilty. Peter should be apologising right now, not getting a weird hug.  
"Can we end this awkward man-hug and talk about something else?" he asks, and Alex laughs dryly as he lets go. "Alright."  
"Yeah, and I totally owe you one. Never meant for you to get in trouble, man."  
"It's fine."  
They don't really say anything for the minute flat it takes Peter to eat his enormous lunch, and then he pipes up again.  
"Hey, d'you know any kids called Jean? Same age as your brother, I think."  
To his surprise, Alex has to smother a smile. "Jean Grey. Scott reckons he'll be in love with her forever."  
"Is she a scary-ass psychic, by any chance?"  
Alex looks over at him like he's crazy, and Peter quickly elaborates.  
"I met her this morning, she read my mind, and then made all the posters in the hall fall down by _blinking_."  
Alex seems to take a moment to process that information, then nods. "Scott said she wasn't normal."  
"Yeah, no kidding."  
It's at that point that Peter notices the papers that are sticking out of Alex's bag.  
"Whoa, man, what are they?"  
  _They look like..._  
"Huh? Nothing, just-"  
"You're joining the army?"  
Alex honest-to-god turns red and shoves them out of view.  
That kind of thing has never stopped Peter. Alex feels a rush of displaced air and intangibly quick fingers, and when he looks up Peter is reclining a few benches away and flicking through them with a frown between his silver brows.  
"Didn't really peg you as a military kind of guy, y'know? Thought you'd be one of the dudes saying we should've pulled out of Vietnam and all, although I guess-"  
"Fuck off." laughs Alex. His voice is very low, almost rumble. "Principal Fury gave them to me, after the standard 'Don't blow things up, son' talk. I guess the administration thinks I'd be better off committing _constructive_ property damage."  
"You could be, like, Captain America." grins Peter, handing the papers back. "Only, without the shield."  
"Yeah, and with the fiery hula-hoops of death."  
He blurs back to the other side of Alex, artfully stealing a handful of tortilla chips. Captain America was his favourite comic when he was younger, although partially that was because someone so patriotic - _'It's not even our country, Peter!'_ \- antagonised Wanda.  
"I could never do the army thing." he intones thoughtfully. "Marching around with everyone else, obeying orders, standing still." The thought makes him physically shudder. "Ugh, god. Standing still."  
"You get used to it." shrugs Alex, and then, at his curious glance, elaborates succinctly. "Prison."  
"Oh."

"I didn't spend much time 'marching around with everyone else', though. Spent ninety percent of it in solitary."  
Peter tries to imagine spending months (at least) on his own, and his brain just short-circuits and tells him _don't even go there, buddy_. "Why?" he says, instead of trying to empathise.  
"It was my choice." replies Alex, looking both at the ground and somewhere else in his memories. "I got into a fight, first week, and I almost... I was scared that if it happened again then the fiery hula-hoops of death's kick in. And the other guy wouldn't walk away."  
"I'm sorry, man."  
"Why, what did you do?" Alex glances at him, and then shrugs. "It's fine."  
They're kind of bad at talking to each other about things without it getting painful and tense. Peter can only really make it worse from here on out, so he does.  
"I can't control it either." he admits. "It was worse when I was younger, but it's still pretty bad now. There should be a school or something, or just... someone to help, you know? Everyone else has a place to go for help except us, we're just stuck here, surrounded by people who hate us. People suck."  
"Watch it." warns the older boy. "You're beginning to sound like Magneto."  
Peter blanches and turns to stare at Alex. "What?! No- no way-"  
"He's a fucking megalomaniac supervillain terrorist, you want to end up like that?"  
"I'm not like Magneto, ok?! I was just- Alex, we need _help._ "  
Alex seems satisfied that Peter's not going to run off and join a terrorist organisation, because he nods to himself. "Sorry. Have you been actually listening to what he says? Magneto?"  
"No. I was too freaked to move the first time-" It takes a lot to scare Peter so much that he doesn't move, since most of the time he gets jumpy and even more hyperactive than usual. "And then... I dunno, it didn't seem important. The guy's crazy, right?"  
"Hate to say it, but it's kind of logical. Twisted weird Lehnsherr logic, but still."  
"Isn't it unfair that you get to agree with him and I don't?"  
"Shut up. He keeps saying stuff, about humans, and it kinda sounds like he's scared of them. Not angry- well, he is angry, but... he's like a cornered dog, trying to defend himself."  
Peter hesitates, and then shakes his head, resolved to be against Magneto no matter what. He. Is. Insane.  
"That doesn't make any of it ok. People are scared of what they don't know, you don't murder them for it. It's-" He takes a deep breath, unsure of how to say this without getting another unnecessary man-hug. "My mom, my aunt, my dad, like, ninety percent of my family that I never met, were all in the camps. In the, the- the holocaust. When they were kids. Like Magneto was. And, yeah, the whole 'Kill all mutants' thing is scaring the hell out of them, but they're not yelling 'Kill all humans' back."  
"Holy shit, I'm so sorry..." replies Alex, and Peter shrugs, trying not to think about it.  
"'I'm just saying. It doesn't matter _why_ , it just matters that he's doing it, and it sucks, and it's making it worse."  
The older boy nods, and Peter reaches up to brush his hair out of his eyes, squinting upwards.  
"Is it me, or is it getting sunnier?"  
Alex grimaces at him. "Aw, man. That is the least subtle subject change I've ever heard."  
"No, seriously, it's really warm."  
"Whatever." Peter shakes his head at him, and they wait in the - suddenly heated - area for the bell to go.


	7. THE SECOND DAY: part three

Math is torture, and he has no idea why he signed up for it. Hell, he doesn't even know what kind of math this is - numbers and letters and numbers and letters and equations and _you'll need this in your exam, please memorise it_ and there's no way Peter's going to remember that - and he's really just zoning out to kill time. The one advantage of this class, however (and the only reason he hasn't dropped out yet), is that his teacher is about eighty seven and doesn't even understand the concept of mutants, never mind guess that Peter is one.  
Briefly, he glances up, hears the word 'Trigonometry', and drops his head back on the desk. This. Is. So. Bori-  
"Mr Maximoff?" calls the voice of the teacher, half-amused and half-exasperated, so apparently not for the first time. He looks up, his hair falling in his eyes, with a mumbled 'Eh?'.  
"Still with us?"  
The rest of the students are looking at him - again - so he brushes himself back to looking almost normal and leans back casually in his seat. "Yup."  
"I was saying that perhaps Mr Cassidy would be best sitting next to you, as you'll both be needing some extra help."  
There's a stoned-looking redhead in the doorway, which means there's a new student. He decides to feign innocence.  
"What do you mean, teach?" he asks, adding in a few bats of his eyelashes for comedic value. He doesn't get a laugh: people are suspicious of everything he does now, and he guesses that havigenetic anomaly means that he  _can't_ in their minds.  
"Well," continues the old man, picking up Peter's workbook despite his 'Ah, it's probably best if you don't look at that-'. "Considering that the only thing you've done today is a commendably detailed drawing of Captain America in a Hawaiian skirt with a hula hoop-" _Haha, oh yeah, Alex put that image in my head_. "I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume you haven't been paying much attention."  
The redhead at the door snickers, and Peter's surprised for a fraction of a moment.  
"Isn't Cassidy a girl's name?" he quips quickly, as the new kid practically collapses into the seat next to him.  
"Very funny, dude. I'm Sean Cassidy, it's my surname." replies the kid, Sean. His words are not actually as slurred as you might expect, which is a good sign. There's a difference, as he painstakingly explained to Wanda, between hippie culture and actually getting high off your mind.  
"Peter Maximoff." _And I actually find it shocking that you haven't noticed the colour of my hair yet and decided that I'm not worth talking to_ , he adds mentally. "What're you doing here, then? Your family move or something?"  
Sean grimaces, clearly chewing the words over before he spits them out.  
"Got kicked out of St Anthony's."  
That's the Catholic school a few streets away, which Peter's uncle had sniffed at and said it was _extortionately_ expensive. Then again, Uncle Django thinks anything that costs more than ten dollars is extortionate, which is why he turns a blind eye when Peter comes into the house holding microwaves, video games, and twinkies that he clearly hasn't paid for.  
"Really?" he laughs, and Sean nods back, smiling lopsidedly. "What did you do?"  
"Uh, you know when people sing really really high and glass smashes?" he begins, thoughtfully and more hesitantly.  
"Yeah?"  
"Well, I was in the choir and... that happened." Sean taps his Adam's apple thoughtfully. "Something strange with my voice."  
Peter takes a millisecond to whip his head around and check no one else heard that, and then back to Sean with an expression of utter incredulity on his face. "What the hell, man," he hisses. "You can't just admit to being a-"  
"What? You've got old-man hair, it's kind of obvious that you're one too."  
"Are you fucking stoned?" he splutters, falling back on a wavering logic.  
Sean blinks back and doesn't bother answering. His pupils are huge, Peter notices.  
"Look," he continues, clutching back some control of his wildly hammering heart. "People here don't like mutants, ok? At all."  
"No one likes mutants, man." sighs Sean, genuinely regretful. "They only found out we exist three months ago and they already hate us"  
"I'm just saying, keep quiet about your sonic screaming."  
He starts spinning a pen between his fingers, but then curiosity gets the better of him and he turns back to the other boy.  
"How does that even work?"  
Sean grins lazily and shrugs. "Dunno. Something in my throat, I guess, and then when I whistle or sing or scream or anything, stuff smashes. Glass, pottery... people's eardrums..."  
"I run faster than the speed of sound." he replies, simply. Sean bobs his head affirmatively.  
"You could, like, make a sonic boom, and we could deafen people together."  
He takes a moment to consider that, then shrugs noncommittally. "Sure, ok."  
"Not in a romantic way, though," continues Sean, his eyes unfocused. "I have a girlfriend. Maeve."  
"I don't care. Also, why would that sound romantic?"  
"It kinda sounded like I was asking you on a date. That's chill, man. She's really hot, though."  
"I still don't care."

The second the bell went, he was out of there.


	8. THE SECOND DAY: part four

Sometimes, Peter finds, it's easier to just not question things. Like, it's easier not to protest that it's still his job to pick Lorna up from elementary school, despite the fact that Wanda stays at home and could do it just as easily.  
Or that it's easier not to ask why the little girl standing with Lorna has white hair that stands out starkly against the darkness of her skin, and why her eyes flicker to entirely milky white before she can blink them back to normal.  
"Hi, munchkin!" he calls in greeting, ruffling his sister's hair before she has a chance to say anything. It started turning green a few weeks ago, and they had all been thoroughly prepared to help her try and dye it brown, or sit through crying and screaming... but she'd been delighted. Of course, Lorna doesn't get that people are going to see her and Peter on the street and clock them for mutants immediately, and that that's going to potentially cause all kinds of problems, but they're hardly going to point that out to her. Let the kid have her funny hair and be happy with it.  
"Who's your buddy?"  
"I'm not a munchkin," she objects forcefully, and then gives up the information. "And this is Ororo. Her mommy said she could come over to our house after school today."  
The other girl, Ororo, waves shyly at Peter and then shoves her hands back in the central pocket of her dungarees.  
"Did you ask Aunt Marya?" he asks, trying to be sternly responsible and probably ending up somewhere more in the region of bored and sarcastic.  
Lorna's glare is both cute and somehow genuinely scary.  
"She won't mind."  
"It's your head, kiddo." he warns, and gets a sweet smile as she realises he's not going to tell her she can't bring Ororo home.  
The two girls walk in front of him, discussing the relative merits of _The Aristocats_ over _Robin Hood_ , and then Lorna freaking out because Ororo apparently has never seen _The Jungle Book_ because they didn't have it in Cairo. Peter didn't know if she meant there wasn't a Egyptian Arabic version or that her family just didn't have it, and then got distracted by childhood memories of Wanda yelling at him because he'd got them kicked out of their cinema in Romania by running in front of the projector and she hadn't seen the end of _Snow White_. (He had said there was a book of Grimm fairytales at home, and she levitated a stick at him. _Violently_.)  
Everything's easy, basically, until there's a gap in the conversation and Ororo turns around to stare at him with big eyes.  
"Does everyone in your family have funny hair?" she asks, slightly awed.  
Peter mentally freezes.  
 _Ah. Ok. Small children who barely know the definition of the word 'mutant'_ \- he wonders if they read the government announcement to them too, or if there was a first grader friendly version - _need an explanation of this. Friendly adult anywhere? Help?_  
"Uh," he starts, then stops. _C'mon, Peter, this isn't that hard_. "Just me and Lorna, actually."  
Ororo looks so disappointed that he immediately expands on it.  
"Hey, but my other sister," he continues quickly. "Wanda, she has powers too. It's just that her hair's normal."  
"Oh." She smiles at him, interest assuaged, and turns back to Lorna. "You didn't tell me you had a sister too."  
Lorna only shrugs dismissively, and Peter files it away to tell Wanda later that she is the irrelevant sibling.  
"What about your aunt and uncle?" presses Ororo further. "My mommy makes clouds too."  
"No, they're normal." Lorna sounds almost disappointed as she says it, and Peter has to suppress a smile. It's good that she thinks normal is bad, that being a mutant is a fun thing to be. And then he notices that Lorna is grinning, which is never a good sign.  
"Make it sunny again." she urges her friend, whispering so loudly that Peter can easily hear her. Ororo covers her mouth to hold back a giggle, and shakes her head.  
"Go on, it'll be funny."  
"No! I already made it sunny once, and the weatherman said there'd be clouds today."  
In the background, Peter frowns. If the little kid in front of him controls the weather that would explain, like, a lot (including why the sun came out with no explanation halfway through lunch), but it also kind of sucks that she's hiding. Peter channels his mutation into what his teachers think is ADHD because he can't use it in public anymore, Wanda can't control it so she doesn't even go outside, it says on Lorna's file that she gets chronic headaches because that was the only thing they could think of to explain that she can hear the buzzing of all the metal in the room, and she is a hundred percent _forbidden_ from moving the metal. He can imagine that Ororo watches the weather reports religiously, aware of the fact that if she strays too far from it, people are going to notice. It's not like he's judging, obviously, because look at Sean - kicked out of his school - and Alex - sent to prison - and all the other cases on the news that basically say _bad things will happen if people find out about you_ , and he and everyone else he knows is a mutant is hiding too.  
At that point, it occurs to Peter that Ororo mentioned her mother moving clouds as well; he's never met an adult mutant, really, apart from Xavier and his buddies. Whenever you see them on the news they're always kids, or at least young adults.  
Maybe if she comes to pick Ororo up he can ask her how to actually, he doesn't know, _not get killed_ by normal people.

When they arrive back home, his aunt is ranting rapidly down the phone at some called either 'Eric', 'Erik', or 'Erich'. She's also gesticulating wildly, so she's probably frustrated, although Marya gesticulates wildly whenever she talks. He used to joke that he never knew when he was in trouble, because she was always accidentally smacking him by throwing her arms out. She would respond to this by protesting that he was always underfoot, so it was his fault.  
"Um," he starts, trying to attract her attention and receiving a gasp and what sounds like 'And now he's in the house Erik, you scumbag, and I'll have to call you back'. "Aunt Marya?"  
Whoever's on the other end of the line snaps something in irate German, and she produces a low tut of anger in her throat.  
Peter decides that he's best off not knowing.  
"Lorna brought a friend home," he continues cautiously. "Is that ok?"  
That catches her attention, at least. She shoves the phone face down on the work surface and stares at him in disbelief.  
"A friend. Into this house. Where cutlery floats around and everything periodically reverses itself in time."  
"The friend controls the weather," he offers, staring her out. "And has eyes that turn white."  
Marya relaxes immediately and picks up the phone again. "Oh, that's fine then. Just make sure lightning doesn't strike anything valuable, ja, Peter?"  
"Ja."  
He speeds forward to brush a kiss against her cheek, and it's the first time he's been at anything other than normal human speed since lunchtime and it feels so much freaking better than pretending to be s l o w.  
"It's chill," he calls to the two little girls, choosing only to grin at the way that Ororo laughs at his speed when he whizzes past them. "She says you can stay."

Unfortunately, he's only been in his basement four minutes or so - and, in that time, played sixteen games of Pong against himself, run to the arcade and tried out Space Invaders, worn out his table tennis set a little further and eaten seven twinkies - when he feels a sudden and pretty much irresistible urge to run upstairs and have a conversation with the elder of his sisters.  
"If this is about the random kid playing dollies with the munchkin," he mutters through gritted teeth, and does his best to continue bouncing the ping pong ball between his hands. "Then, she's a friend and a mutant, so- _just get upstairs right now_. Ok."  
He said that out loud: Wanda made him say it. That's just downright creepy.  
"You control people's thoughts now?" he asks, less than a second later, lying sprawled out on her bed.  
Wanda doesn't even blink, and keeps painting her nails.  
"Maybe." she hums. "I don't know. It just happened."  
"I met two new muties today." he says, just randomly.  
"I know, that's why I wanted to talk to you." She's giving him this half-amused look, like she's wondering whether he'll look any good with electric pink nail polish - he won't, and plus, the kids at school don't need another reason to tackle him in the halls - and then smiles. "Alex seems nice."  
"Yeah, he's pretty cool."  
"Sean seems like a hopeless stoner."  
"That sounds correct." He glances up at her and frowns. "Why are you asking?"  
Wanda cocks her head to one side and affects a faux-cutie smile. "I'm thinking of assembling a mutant army." she deadpans sweetly.  
Well, two can play at that game.  
Peter blinks at her innocently. "I thought you were anti-Magneto." he points out and she, unable to keep up the facade any longer, cackles in laughter and throws a pillow at him.


	9. THE SECOND DAY: part five

"That friend of yours seems nice." smiles his uncle, at Lorna, and she nods emphatically.  
"Yuh huh! 'Ro's super duper nice. And friendly."  
"Where's she from?"  
Peter isn't really paying attention. For some reason, his aunt insists that they have a family dinner together as often as possible, which means that he's been sitting at this table for five minutes, twitching.  
"Um, she was born in New York," continues Lorna thoughtfully. "But her mommy's from Kenya, and they went to live in Egypt." The little girl's eyes go wide and serious. "There was a plane crash, and she thought her mommy was _dead_ , so she lived on her own in the city for a whole _year_."  
"Wow." agrees Wanda, and Peter can't help but grin and add:  
"Yeah, someone with a more broken childhood than us. That's, like, rare."  
While his twin sends him a look that says _Seriously? Shut up, Pete_ quite clearly, Lorna continues.  
"But then her mommy found her, so it's ok. And she moved here just now."  
Peter wonders what kind of person thinks it's a good idea to move to America with a mutant daughter, being a mutant themselves, with this kind of social climate.  
And then he realises that his family is talking again, and twists around to glance at the resolutely turned-off TV.  
"Hey, could I turn that on?" he asks, and knows that he's probably getting disappointed looks behind his back, but also fails to care.  
"So long as you keep it on quiet." shrugs Uncle Django, and recieves a sharp, disapproving slap on his arm from his wife. Peter doesn't have to turn around to know: that sound is perfectly familiar to him.  
"...so I am calling on any young mutants to come forward-" urges the voice of a professional-looking man in a wheelchair emphatically, with a kind of fervour in his eyes.  
Peter hits the off button so fast that it nearly snaps.  
"Was that Xavier?" asks Wanda, and he shrugs as he whizzes back over to his seat.  
"Don't know. Doesn't matter,"  
"So, Peter," interrupts his aunt, her voice slow. The eyes of every child around the table narrow, knowing that this tone is the equivalent of the calm before the storm. She's going explode if he doesn't give the right answer to the question she is inevitably about to ask. "Wanda tells me you've met some nice kids at school. With nice mutations."  
"Traitor." he hisses to his twin.  
"Why haven't you brought any home?"  
_Oh. She's trying to matchmake._ Peter actually kind of relaxes at that thought.  
"Well, maybe because they're all guys." he offers, trying not to smile around a mouthful of food.  
"What?" cuts Uncle Django "What's that?"  
"Any mutants that Peter might have been able to date are male." explains Wanda, smiling, and Django frowns. He seems somehow even further perplexed.  
"Eh? Peter's gay?"  
His aunt chokes on her food at the exact same moment that Peter yells 'No!' and Lorna giggles.  
(And maybe he hasn't figured out his sexuality yet, but that's his own business and totally not something he wants to bring up in front of ultra-Catholic relatives unless a hundred percent necessary.)  
"It's alright if you are." cuts Magda, waving her hands placatingly. Peter and Wanda both smother awkward, inappropriate smiles, because while she looks a little uncomfortable, their aunt and uncle have a motto: _whatever the Nazis didn't like, we're all for_.  
He swallows, so as not to smile, and looks up at her.  
"Nein, tante. I like girls."  
That's not a lie, at least. There's this cheerleader at school, Crystal, and Peter is absolutely head over heels just for her face. She's probably not a mutant, though, and even ignoring that, probably not into weirdo kleptomaniac guys.  
"Well," she continues. "I thought Alex was a girl's name."  
"No."


	10. THE THIRD (and worst) DAY

Maybe he should have paid attention to Charles Xavier on the TV. Peter was just bored of everything being about mutants all the time, and anyone 'urging' them to do anything just seemed ominous, right?  
But Xavier's a mutant himself. He has to be on their side, and Peter really needs to see someone on his side right now.  
Because the police are in school and have got basically every mutant kid he can name (about thirty five, in a school of 1200), plus a few others, standing out in the halls.  
_You could not_ pay _me to tell Aunt Marya about this_ , he decides, fidgeting from foot to foot and half-watching Alex flick a lighter open and shut for the sole purpose of freaking out the other students. _Me and Wanda and Lorna'd be out of the country before we could say 'don't overreact'._  
Although, maybe it'd be a good idea to work out someplace where he and his sisters can go if the shit hits the fan.  
_This isn't historical hatred or scapegoating or any of the things that Nazi Germany hated people for, he reminds himself desperately. It's fear of the unknown, and also fear of the nutjob that threatened the president. But that blue woman and Charles Xavier and the socially challenged scientist guy with him and me and everyone else aren't like him; people have gotta see that. They're going to see it._  
"Peter." grunts Alex's voice, and he snaps out of his momentary inner panic to shoot the older boy a look. "Calm down. You're vibrating."  
"Sorry, man. Just freaking out a little bit, you know?"  
Alex puts a hand on his shoulder to hold him to the ground. "Look," he says, under his breath. "You haven't done anything, have you?"  
"Uh..." He and Alex exchange a look of heartfelt 'oh shit' as they both realise they _have_ done something.  
"That they can pin on you." he rectifies quickly.  
"I don't think so." Other than that inadvisable stunt with Wanda at the warehouse, he's stuck mostly to the squeaky-clean side of the law.  
"So, we're innocent." reasons Alex calmly. "They can't do anything."  
Peter doesn't reply, because if Alex wants to use that logic, then fine. But people being arrested without charge and dragged off somewhere scary is exactly the kind of thing that he doesn't want to happen to him or anyone else ever because it's happened before and millions of people died.  
His aunt said once that in Europe in the forties, what they were made to wear wasn't a star or an inverted triangle. It was a target.  
He kind of feels as though he's wearing a target right now, just by virtue of his hair, and Alex's logic isn't working to calm him down, so he searches for another explanation.  
"You and me have got criminal records," he blurts. "Right? Maybe they're just trying to talk us out of a life of crime."  
Alex looks around, brows furrowed sceptically. "I don't know, there's a lot of little kids here."  
"Little kids steal stuff, or beat other kids up." Peter casts his eyes around, and almost visibly relaxes when they land on Sean. He's leaning against a wall, wearing a pair of round John-Lennon sunglasses, looking monumentally blazed, and seems to see when Peter catches his eye. Eventually he ambles over to them.  
"Hey, quicksilver," drawls Sean. "S'up?"  
"Quicksilver?" asks Peter, the word coming out too fast. "Why'reyoucallingmethatmanit'sPeter,Pietroifyou'rebeingserious-"  
"He's kinda hyped up." explains Alex gruffly. "Peter reckons that we're out here 'cos we've got criminal records."  
Sean nods, and then flashes a bright grin. "Substance abuse."  
"Theft." puts in Peter.  
"Arson." says Alex, reluctantly. "...plus also assault and battery."  
It's then that they remember Sean has only been here a day, and doesn't know about Alex 'Scary Motherfucker' Summers, because he chokes a little on a laugh and leans forwards enough as he doubles over that they can see his bloodshot eyes.  
"You win, dude." he gasps, apparently of the opinion that Alex and his urban-legend fuel deeds are hilarious. "Why'd you do it?"  
"Was an accident." Alex mumbles, an then coughs and says the next bit louder. "Anyways, they threatened my baby brother."  
Peter suddenly understands that Alex must have gotten the assault charge from beating up the kind of assholes who threaten a - how old was Scott when Alex went to prison? Ten-ish? - ten year old, and then the arson from his mutation deciding that it'd come out and play while he was at it.  
He doesn't have time to say any of this out loud, which is probably a good thing because he would totally fuck up and get punched, knowing him, because a cop walks up to them and asks them to follow everyone else to the gym.  
_I could run away right now_ , he thinks. _Run home, or anywhere. I could run to... shit, I don't know. Lichtenstein._  
But that would involve leaving everyone else to their fates, and he doesn't want to do that.

Inside the gym is what looks like a blood donation area. There are hypodermic needles and men and women in white coats, with all the kids lining up anxiously, and the second Peter sees it he backs right up.  
Nuh uh. No way is he having anything to do with that.  
Peter Maximoff does _not_ like hospitals, or jabs, or doctors.  
Sean, naturally, crashes into him, and looks around carefully before spinning straight around to face the guilt-faced police officer who led them in here.  
"Oh, sorry man. I can't donate blood." he shrugs. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the policeman doesn't move. "There's some funky shit in my veins, man." Sean adds, making vague hand gestures to get his message across, and honestly Peter is shocked that someone that oblivious that they don't notice Sean is stoned out of his mind managed to become a cop.  
"What," frowns the cop. "You're anaemic?"  
The redhead flicks a glance at Peter and Alex from over his sunglasses, and when the two other boys don't say anything, shoves them back up his nose and claps the cop on the shoulder. "Sure, whatever."  
"I, uh, don't like needles." Peter hums to Alex, who thankfully just nods like he gets it (Peter vibrates when he's nervous, ok? Getting vaccines in ninth grade was _while vibrating_ was not a good experience.), and strides over to the tables where the medical staff are with the kind of menace that makes everyone pause to stare at him.  
"What are you doing?" he growls, in a tone that he probably thinks is civil but everyone else would write off as threatening. "Why are you taking our blood?"  
The boy he's standing next to startles at the question, and rolls his sleeve back down where he had just pulled it up to give the medical guy his arm, like he hadn't thought to ask it. The kid looks about fourteen, and if the way that the other kids hang back from him is any indicator, very probably a mutant.  
"Routine tests." smiles the man, slimily, and if anything people seem more hesitant.  
"Tests for what?" insists Alex. His torso seems somehow tight, and for a second Peter wonders what the fiery hula hoops of death look like, and if he can outrun them.  
"A genetic disorder." shoots back the medical officer, without hesitation. Maybe he's got confused about the average age of the kids in here, because it goes even quieter than it already was as everyone's eyes fix on him in horror.  
They're all thinking it. It's Jean Grey, standing right at the back, who says it. Her voice is as eerie as usual.  
"They want to see if we're mutants."  
There's a worried murmur of frightened whispering and graphs, and the kids in general shift a little. In front of Alex, the dark-haired kid jerks his arm out of the nurse's grasp.  
"Come back here!" barks the adult, and he shakes his head, backing almost straight into Alex.  
"You can't just take our blood." he protests, voice squeaking halfway through the sentence. A cop, his hand on his gun, takes a step towards the kid - seriously?! A _kid_ \- and somehow he darts to both sides at once and separates from himself and there's two of him.  
"Bodily autonomy." they both say together, desperately.  
If Peter was freaking out before, he's gone over the edge of panic and straight into a whole nightmare universe. But there are people with guns pointed at some random mutant kid(s) and he can do something about it. All the others see is a silvery blur, maybe a _whoosh_ of wind if he comes close to them, and less than a second later he's stood in the centre of the room, with every gun deposited safely on top of the gym equipment.  
People are staring, and not in their usual way. Ignoring the adults, obviously, it kind of seems like they're impressed.  
"Who are you?" he asks, to the men who aren't the police. Who wanted their blood.  
They don't reply.  
"Either you start talking," snarls Alex. "Or shit gets burned down."  
"Whoa, man," whispers Sean, just a little too loud. "There are people here who totally don't deserve to be set on fire." To the men, he says. "Explain. Or I'm going to scream."  
"They're from Trask Industries." says Jean, and is Peter seeing things or is her hair floating around just a little bit? "They're scared of us. They hate us."  
Alex is the oldest guy in here, Peter thinks - at least, the oldest guy who isn't looking at them like they're rabid stray dogs - and so he turns to him.  
"We can't stay here. I'll run the little kids out-"  
"No." says Alex, the word solid and unmovable, and very clearly a warning. Everyone's listening. "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to walk out, and go home, and no one's going to touch us. And if they do..."  
Peter catches one of the versions of the dark-haired kid as he passes on the way out.  
"Hey, uh..."  
"Jamie."  
"Jamie, do you know what that Xavier guy said on the news yesterday? I wasn't paying attention."  
"Uh, yeah. The government was paying him to talk to us, and he said not to trust anything from Trask Industries."  
Peter thinks that he should maybe concentrate on these sorts of things, and lets the kid go.  
The paramilitary/medical guys don't come after them.  
_Good, he thinks. We're mutants and we could kick your ass but we won't.  
Remember that._


	11. EPILOGUE

That night is spent trying not to give his aunt and uncle any clue of what happened while simultaneously explaining that neither he or Lorna are going back to school, like, forever. Wanda apparently knows already, and is so relieved he's ok that she throws her arms around him and almost _cries_. He hasn't seen her so close to actual tears since they came to the hospital and explained that she was allowed to come home. Wanda's strong.  
Eventually, it does (kinda) work out. There's more threats of being put on a plane and sent to Europe, because Aunt Marya isn't stupid and she works out that _something_ happened, but Uncle Django talks her down and Lorna says she'd have a tantrum and Wanda says she'd have a mental breakdown and Peter says he'd run away, so they stay where they are.  
Before the Sentinels and Magneto and the rest of that crazy shit at the White House, being trapped inside all day would have driven him seriously nuts, but now he's just kind of glad he can use his powers through the day.

They spend a week like that, safe and hidden away.

*

The day that Charles Xavier finds them is not on the list of shitty days. He rolls up to the door in a wheelchair, and Peter knows he's there the moment his car pulls in but chose to presume that Charles isn't trying to sell them out to Trask Industries or the newest mutant-hating organisation - the 'Friends of Humanity', ugh - and doesn't stop him.  
"He has an institute," remarked Wanda, before the doorbell even rang. "For people like us."  
"You creep me out." Peter informed her, and Lorna blinked up at them innocently.  
"I can feel a metal chair." she said, and they both nodded.  
"It's ok." assured Wanda. "He's a friend."  
"We think." adds Peter, and then zooms off to open the door.  
"Mr. Maximoff." greets Xavier calmly, like he didn't unleash hell by breaking Magneto out of prison. "May I talk to you and your family about my school for gifted youngsters...?"

It's a no-brainer to go with him, really. And Alex is going to be there too, which is awesome.  
So, yeah.  
Things aren't so shitty anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes: I love the Sean Cassidy is a stoner thing, I'm sorry.  
> Wanda is mainly from Age of Ultron, which I saw and OH MY FREAKING GOD QUICKSILVER BBY WHY  
> Erik's terrorist activity is kinda like the Mandarin's in Iron Man 3, I guess.  
> Thanks for reading! :)

**Author's Note:**

> I have ALMOST finished this! I'll post the chapters up a few days at a time, so I will have finished it by the time the last chapter is up. It's been sitting around too long!  
> I SWEAR this fic will be finished. On my heart.


End file.
